zephyr1934

Good question... sounds like an interesting challenge for someone to take up, but why limit it to the EN? Any lego body on a Lionel Pacific frame would be cool.

Not only that, but now that you mention it, they are also covering the top of the wheels, similar to the prototype.

Personally I would do one light centered above each door but that is just because of how I envision an engine-house. If you keep them as is, why not get rid of the wing plates and just use the 1x8 plates (potentially moving the lights up or down a fraction of a plate if necessary).

I see what you mean about the trade-off, but it is nice to see the huge gap below the doors closed up. Good use of the boat studs to reinforce the doors. It's too bad that a tile build is not possible since they do not make 3x3 curved tiles. Meanwhile, to my eye, the extra exposed studs to get the vents might outweigh the benefit of the vents, but that is all a matter of personal taste.

Looking good!

Looking good... but why not do a brick built door design to not only allow your steamers in, but also to cover the gap above the rails?

Big steam was obsoleted on the VGN when they electrified in the 1920's. Most preserved steam locomotives were pulled from the scrapping lines at the very end of steam (ca. 1950). A few significant steam locomotives were preserved, e.g., many railroads kept their "first locomotive" (off the top of my head: B&O, NP, GN, SP) and some significant locomotives (NYC 999), but many locomotives that should have survived didn't, e.g., I think one of the golden spike locomotives was cut up in the 1920's even though it's significance was recognized. That is also why there are so few preserved streamlined steamers. Some had their shrouds removed as they were relegated to secondary trains or freight, while others were scrapped outright because they represented a losing bet and were out of fashion (Hiawatha's) which happened 5-10 years before anyone thought much about steam preservation. It did not help that the crack passenger trains were usually the first to get diseasels but many of the displaced high speed passenger locomotives were very specialized and did not have much else they were good for. Most of the preserved big steam survived because they were among the last steamers to be replaced by diesel and by that point people recognized how unique these machines were compared to their replacements.

I do not see where the door rails are on the model, but depending on the location, you could get a similar effect with jumper plates. Meanwhile, your image of the prototype looks somewhere between reddish brown and dark red to my eyes.

Why not start a new thread and post pictures of what is giving you troubles? There are plenty of folks around these parts who might be able to offer suggestions.

That wide ring on the wheel for the steam dome is too eye catching. You might want to try something else for the dome, e.g., as per...

I still don't understand why Tom doesn't simply exit the production and let designated producers like BTD do the fulfillment while paying him a royalty for the design (similar to what BTD already does with Nate's wheels).

Now that a connection has been made, I'd suggest moving the negotiations to a private message

Looking good. The use of the straight slopes gives it a classic train appearance. I would agree that the cab looks chunky, but if anything the prototype looks even chunkier. Also neat to see your coupling system in place of magnets

An interesting experiment, thanks for sharing. I'm not surprised that it worked so well, but the next challenge will be figuring out how to make the track look respectable, at least in the curves. I bet that has more to do with the length of the body relative to the radius of the curve. As the rear wheel is entering the curve if it is shoving the front will be pushed hard against the outside rail and put up a lot of resistance.

I think that yellow slider is PU trying to update the firmware. You could try contacting Lego customer support and see what they say.

Excellent!

Or even restarting the phone. Did the PUP app download the most recent firmware to the hub?

Great work! Can't wait to see photos of the model next to the prototype

Nice! One thought though, maybe extend the flat car 2 studs and distribute the gap between the containers so that it doesn't wind up looking like a long box car from a distance.

What's wrong with this picture?

My guess is that the thing on the front deck is a sandbox since clearly there is no sand dome for the front engine. As for strange looking locomotives, this one is probably second tier, e.g., cab forwards and articulated tank engines also leap ahead. Still, the unusual wheel arrangement puts it close behind the handful of really strange locomotives. At any rate, the sand green looks good. Since you've built it up it would still be interesting to see how its appearance changes in the other greens and maybe even black (just change the color not the actual parts)

Part of my thinking when I made the same decision was that no one would mistake this build for the Emerald Night (especially non-train AFOL's, but even train-heads who are just quickly skimming at a show)

Yes, if you follow the link to my earlier thread in Pdaitabird's post, the second photo shows the real Havre locomotive in it's sand green jacket. If you go to GreatNorthernEmpire.net and select "locomotives -> steam locomotives -> Types" you can see a spectrum of greens. My feeling is that dark green is closest, but you could probably get away with sand green since few people have first hand experience these days. It does look like GN green is lighter than Pullman green

Sand green is definitely wrong for GN green, but ignoring the fact that it is not prototypical it looks great to my eye and I wanted it to look different enough from the EN. In the case of my Northern, I was working off of the Havre locomotive, which in its preserved state is close to sand green (I asked one of my real steam buddies and he says the rumor was that the park board had a lot of surplus park bench paint in that green and so it went). I don't know for sure what GN green was since all the photos are black and white. From looking at models I think it was somewhere between lego dark green and olive green, but closer to dark green.

Assuming you are aiming for "in service" this would more likely be a "business car" rather than a "private car," but what's in a name? We done regardless. Two quirks, the rear deck should have the railings on the sides too. While the floor would have trap doors to open up to stairs like you have in the build, they would only be used while in the station. Most of the time the trap doors would be closed and the railings in place making the rear deck more of a fenced in "porch." For the second one, the windows seem just a little too short for a heavyweight car. Might be worth trying 1x2x2 trans clear panels for the windows, though you would lose the division between the paired windows in the lounge area, perhaps you could do the panels for everything ahead of the lounge and then use 1x2x3 windows in the lounge.